Tampa subregional

Losing is getting old

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© St. Petersburg Times
published March 24, 2003

TAMPA -- In the end, they went down without firing a shot. If you remember nothing else about these Florida Gators, remember that.

The season was winding down in disappointment, as it usually does this time of year. The scoreboard was tilted the wrong way, as is often the case in March. Already, the look of underachievement was all over the faces of the players. That, too, has become routine.

There were fewer than seven seconds now, and a freshman guard named Chris Capko, of all people, was dribbling the ball. The cause had been lost for some time, and the fight removed from the Gators, and Capko simply let the ball bounce away from him, skittering endlessly toward nowhere, the way the season had just done.

There they go again, these Florida Gators.

Opening weekend and out.

The Gators weren't simply knocked out of the NCAA Tournament Sunday night. The Michigan State Spartans grabbed them by the collars and the back of the belts and tossed them out into the street.

It was 68-46 by the end, a rude treatment of a No. 2 seed such as the Gators by a Michigan State team that spent much of its season wondering if it would make the tournament at all. Michigan State was better. It was quicker and faster, tougher and smarter, stingier and sharper.

And the Gators? They seemed prepared, at any point, to stop play and repick teams.

This is no longer charming. This is no longer cute. This is no longer enough.

Once, a half-dozen seasons ago, merely reaching the NCAA was plenty for a Florida team. In those days, after all, the gym was just a gathering place for fans to talk about football recruiting and to wait for those rare, planet-aligning seasons when the basketball team might make a rare run.

There is a blessing and a curse with success, however, and Billy Donovan has brought them both to Florida. He has made the sight of the Gators in the Tournament routine for five seasons. For the last three, however, he has made an early departure routine, too.

No one in the field is fooled by Florida's high seeds anymore. This was the third straight year the Gators have lost on opening weekend to a lower seed. Two years ago, their third-seeded team lost to 11th-seeded Temple. Last year, the fifth-seeded Gators lost to 12th-seeded Creighton.

This year, they lost to seventh-seeded Michigan State, and there weren't two seconds in the entire game when it looked anything like an upset. The Spartans might as well have been the Lakers, as cowed as the Gators were.

Gee. If it hadn't been for the high seed, for the partisan crowd or for Donovan snatching freshman Anthony Roberson away from the Spartans, this might have really been embarrassing, huh?

Let's be honest. This Florida team should never have been ranked No. 1 in the nation, as it was in February. But when Donovan insisted after the game that his team had overachieved, well, that's a little bit of a convenient spin.

It's almost like saying the problem isn't that Florida was too bad in the Tournament, it's that it was too darned good during the season. Oh.

Yes, the Gators were young. Isn't everyone? Yes, the Gators have lost some recruits to the pros? Hasn't everyone? Yes, there are injuries and fatigue and transfers. Those aren't unique to Florida.

Hey, Michigan State has lost a few players, too. And the Spartans started three sophomores and a freshman. And it looked like men and boys.

The Gators weren't tough enough on the boards.

They weren't quick enough on defense.

They weren't versatile enough on offense.

Consider the first half. The Gators shot 14 three-pointers and only 13 two-pointers. Michigan State's defense simply pushed Florida far from the basket and watched them miss.

Yet, after the game, Florida's kids, still with eyes glazed, kept talking about how darned unlucky they were to run into another hot team, like LSU and Georgia and Kentucky.

Hey, it's basketball. You get to play defense. You get to say something about how hot the other team will be. You don't have to shoot from three all the time. You don't have to let someone drive past you on the baseline.

The Gators are now 6-9 in March since they played Michigan State for the national title four seasons ago, and they are 1-3 in their last four NCAA Tournament games. And frankly, it seems to rankle Donovan that people talk about that as much as the regular-season victories.

Said Donovan: "If someone had told me (before he arrived) you're going to five straight NCAAs, one year go to the national championship, one year to the Sweet 16, two second-round exits and a first-round exit, I'd still sign up for that in a second."

Ah, Darling Billy. You know better. This isn't 1998 anymore.

Donovan has been praised plenty for bettering the results. He has to expect the raised standards, too. He raised them.

"Losing in the second round isn't enough for me," Donovan conceded. Not for anyone else, either.

The answer, of course, is Donovan. He has to recruit more versatile teams. By his admission, last season's Gators couldn't shoot very well, and this year's couldn't defend very well.

That's up to him. Donovan has done a great job recruiting players who can run and shoot. Now, he needs a demon on the backboard and a pickpocket at guard and a linebacker at forward. He needs more complete teams.

More than anyone at Florida, Donovan knows what an elite basketball program looks like.

He also knows this: At an elite program, a defeat such as this should drive people crazy. Especially him.

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